Online fitness sites encounter challenges with their homepages and onboarding processes, including the risk of overwhelming users with too much information, the complexity of personalization during onboarding, and the need to establish trust in trainers and community support.
Create an inviting and intuitive digital entry point that seamlessly guides users towards personalized fitness journeys, encourages direct interaction with trainers, and facilitates connections with like-minded users. Simplifying design, emphasizing what sets RYZE apart for other fitness websites, and maintaining a user-centric focus are key to ensuring a positive user experience.
The onboarding experience of fitness websites often face challenges, including:
Uninspiring Design
Their homepage is a prime example of a “cliche” dated fitness website. Actual users of the program are missing, only leaving fitness influencers to convey relatability. Presenting real people, real users offers transparency and allows potential users to visualize themselves using the program.
No Visibility of Trainers
The section devoted to featuring the program’s variety of experienced trainers is used to show only one trainer. This leaves the user to guess the quality, methodology of the other trainers.
Lengthy Onboarding
The onboarding for the BetterMe platform consists of a staggering 27 questions. The questionnaire becomes quite intrusive when it asks about non-fitness related daily activities and even asks about which body part “needs the most attention”. Although collecting that much data may be helpful, it seems quite excessive.
The homepage and onboarding experience of RYZE addresses some of the key failures of fitness websites.
Modern Design
The brand colors are offer broad appeal to men/woman and different age groups. The use of real users provide a tangible connection for visitors, making the fitness journey more relatable, authentic, and attainable.
Visibility of Trainers
The variety of trainers and their exercise modalities are on full display. Users are able to see exactly the quality of trainers the platforms provides. From rehabilitations work to powerlifting users will find a suitable trainer for their fitness goals.
Concise Onboarding
Onboarding only consist of 5 questions. Only essential data is gathered, greatly reducing the drop rate of potential users. Since Ryze’s focus is to facilitate trainer and user interaction, all other necessary information can be gathered during the first meeting.
RYZE is a motivational brand name that would illustrate “taking on the day”. We rise (RYZE) in the morning and start anew. The brand colors/logo evoke overcoming and achieving your goals. Within the logo itself, it mimics the bright orange sun slowing rising above a dark horizon/moutainscape.
The UX onboarding user flow was kept minimal and quick compared to other fitness platforms. The use of clear language, prominent call to actions, and clean interactive elements help to reduce cognitive load. From start to finish the onboarding is purposely linear in order to for a smooth and seamless experience.
With the transition into hi-fi the brand colors, iconography, and typography were established. The overall UI was geared toward a very clean, active, and fun feel.
Going Forward
Impact
Overall, the onboarding for RYZE Fitness has come out even better than I had initially expected. During UX testing users shared that the design was intuitive to navigate through, more engaging with the images, and demonstrated a clear visual hierarchy. I would like to return to this project and iron out any elements what may be lacking visually or pain points that have been overlooked.
Reflection
I learned that even being an avid gym-goer for over a decade doesn’t necessary equate to what a majority of users would desire from a fitness site. I should have put further effort in researching the negatives that come with online fitness programs earlier on in the design process.
I realized so much after interviewing and talking with potential/previous online fitness users. Their frustrations were not as obvious as I had initially thought. In the future, I plan to rely less on my own assumptions but rather hear it from many others that have experienced it.
